How Empires Decline (including ours)

Chalmers Johnson (1931-2010) Johnson’s books Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire Chalmers Johnson summarized the intent of Blowback in the final chapter of Nemesis.”In Blowback, I set out to explain why we are hated around the world. The concept “blowback” does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to and in foreign countries. It refers to retaliation for the numerous illegal operations we have carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public. This means that when the retaliation comes — as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 — the American public is unable to put the events in context. So they tend to support acts intended to lash out against the perpetrators, thereby most commonly preparing the ground for yet another cycle of blowback. In the first book in this trilogy, I tried to provide some of the historical background for understanding the dilemmas we as a nation confront today, although I focused more on Asia — the area of my academic training — than on the Middle East